a book blog, and then some

All posts tagged: min jin lee

I love a good family saga, a sprawling generational tale of several hundred pages that’ll keep me engrossed for days. I’m always on the lookout for ones that are set in different countries, so I was especially excited to pick up Pachinko, a supposed sweeping story about Korean immigrants living in Japan at the turn of the 20th century. The reason I read family sagas is because I love the drama, the scandal, falling for flawed or evil characters and watching their choice of actions play out. But with Pachinko I was disappointed: I couldn’t fully love these characters because they were basically all too good, I couldn’t indulge in the drama because there barely was any. I could enjoy the cultural differences and the central themes surrounding the plot since the story takes place over the course of several wars with years of famine, distress and crime, but I found it such a shame that there was barely any action. This is a story that takes place over the course of WWI, WWII, several atomic …